The Immortal (14 page)

My clothes
were
lying on a
chair
in the
corner
beside the tired lamp. I was grateful to see no one had disturbed my statue of—myself. The marble artifact had undergone a complete transformation now. It was now totally crystalline, and the liquid inside had turned red. Indeed, it looked like blood. Was it symbolic of my own internal bleeding?

I believed there was meaning in the statue. I knew it was a gift from one of the gods to me, although I didn't know who had set it beside me on Delos. In a sense, for a goddess to be transformed into a mortal ran parallel to a mortal being transformed into stone. The god who had left it may have done so as a personal acknowledgment that I had been unfairly condemned to the Earth. Yet now the stone had changed to crystal. Did that mean I was ready to return to Mt. Olympus? I had serious doubts about 188

THE IMMORTAL

that, no matter what I had written in my letter to my father, and no matter how defiantly I had spoken to Helen before she left.

I
was
scared of meeting Alecto.

I dressed and hurriedly entered Tom's room, using the side door. Moving made my pain twice as bad.

He was sitting up in bed in his clothes. I assumed he had put his clothes on, or someone had helped him into them, in anticipation of our flight to Athens. He did not appear to be in great pain, but there was a film over his eyes. I attributed the latter to the morphine they had given him.

"Josie," he said softly. "I hear you have the same thing I've got, you poor dear."

I sat on the bed beside him. The sweat was pouring off me in quarts. "Tom, my darling, we don't have a virus. We have been poisoned."

He lifted an inquiring eyebrow. He was a bit slow, but still sharp enough. I assumed the shot, though, would wear off before we could reach Delos.

"Who poisoned us?" he asked.

"Helen. What can I say—she's a witch from hell. She ground up glass into a fine powder and put it in the hamburgers we ate yesterday evening. There's nothing the doctors here can do for us. There's no reason for us to stay here. But Helen's not done. She's at the dock now with Pascal. No, I'm sure they've already set out. She's forcing him to take her to Delos. There she intends to kill him."

Tom frowned. "Isn't this a bit farfetched, Josie?"

189

CHRISTOPHER PIKE

"Look at the way you feel!" I shouted, before lowering my voice. "You have to trust me on this, Tom.

There's no help for us here. All we can do now is save Pascal. She has to be stopped."

"But why would she drag him all the way to Delos to kill him? She could kill him here if she wished."

I wasn't about to try to explain the whole story to him. "She's lost her mind. She thinks she's some kind of goddess, and that she has to make a human sacrifice to one of the Furies—Alecto."

"I thought you were the one having the weird experiences."

"I was just having a few dreams. Helen's got a full-blown psychosis going. Tom, I can't argue with you about this anymore, there isn't time. You said yourself you have never been sick like this before. You haven't because you've never swallowed ground glass before. Understand these two points clearly—Helen did this to you, and she is going to do worse to your friend." I grabbed his arm. "We must leave here now before the others come to take us to Athens. Get up!"

Tom got up, much to my surprise. I'd had serious doubts about convincing him to accompany me to Delos. He put his shoes on and we opened the window beside his bed and climbed out into a row of bushes. It was all I could do to keep from screaming—every move seemed to rattle the glass inside me over raw nerve. Yet there's nothing like the desire for vengeance to drive one on, and it doesn't matter if the

190

THE IMMORTAL

individual is mortal or immortal. I was going to drop dead before I let Phthia get away with her plan.

My motor scooter was parked in back of the health center. When Pascal and I brought Tom in, I had decided at the last second to go on my bike rather than in the truck. I had thought—correctly, I saw now— that I might need my bike for reasons unexpected. Pulling my keys from the pocket of my windbreaker, I got Tom on the back and started the bike with a hard kick, one that made me grimace. I peeled away from the miniature hospital.

When we were racing to the harbor, I called back over my shoulder, "I assume Pascal has already taken the motorboat that belongs to his boss. Do you know where we can get another?"

"We can steal one," Tom said.

"It's that easy?"

"Yes. Few people steal anything on Mykonos. So few people lock anything. But if Helen is as dangerous as you say, maybe we should first get the gun at my apartment."

"You have a gun? You just told me how peaceful Mykonos is. Why do you have a gun?"

"Pascal was having trouble with a man in town. That's how I met him—when he was in the middle of a fight with the guy."

"He told me. The man pulled a knife on him and you suddenly appeared and kicked it out of the man's hand. Then Pascal broke the guy's nose."

"Hardly. The guy raised a rolling pin to Pascal,

191

CHRISTOPHER PIKE

which I kicked out of the guy's hand, and then /hit the guy in the nose. Pascal is big and kind but a baby when it comes to violence. In a fearful moment he bought the gun for protection. He's never used it. I think he's forgotten he owns it."

I drove to the apartment. Tom was too weak to climb the stairs, so it was up to me to get the gun. I wondered how we were going to manage to scale Kythnos to rescue the Frenchman.

I found the gun, a small-caliber automatic, where Tom said it would be—in the bottom of Pascal's chest of drawers. I checked to make sure it was loaded, and found the clip full, but didn't search for more ammunition. Stuffing it in my belt under my windbreaker, I hurried back to Tom. Zeus had his thunderbolt— Josie her Smith & Wesson.

We circled the crowded portion of town and made it down to the dock by a back road. Several inflated dinghies lay pulled up on the sandy beach. Tom indicated we had our choice. Together we pulled one of the small boats into the water. Tom started the motor. His shot was already beginning to wear off. He was more alert, but also in more pain.

I had assumed Tom would steal a sailboat, since we didn't have keys for the motorboats. But he said he could hotwire any older boat that didn't have an elaborate locking mechanism. He pointed out that there was no wind, and that a sailboat would take a long time to reach Delos. It was true. The
meltemi
was resting, and I had never seen the night air so still. The moon was completely full, almost straight overhead.

192

THE IMMORTAL

Tom steered the dinghy up beside a powerful-looking but slightly worn motorboat. He climbed aboard first, clumsily, and almost ended up in the water. He had to help me onto the boat. As he bent under the steering wheel and tugged on the wires, I asked him if he paid for his tuition at. Oxford by stealing cars.

"My father is a mechanic," he said. "He taught me everything he knows." He added, "When he was young he stole cars."

"Did he ever get caught?"

"He spent ten years in jail."

"That's a pity," I said.

Tom's eyes were on me, the moonlight bright on his pale face. He appeared to be a marble statue then.

This was the first time I had studied him with the awareness of who I was, the first time the immortal had stared at the mortal. My love for him then was so great, his next question stung me as much as my bodily agony.

"How long will we be in this prison, Josie?" he asked.

He was referring to our pain. "It shouldn't last too long."

He nodded sadly. "We're goners, aren't we?"

I reached over and touched his arm. "There's still hope."

"How can we hope if what you say is true?" A spasm of pain shook him as if to remind him there was no denying the truth of my words. "No one can

193

CHRISTOPHER PIKE

remove the glass from our bodies." He nodded. "We're going to die."

"So we die," I said. "So what? I know there is life beyond the grave. No, this is not a religious sentiment of mine, Tom. It is what I know. There is a heaven, there are many heavens. If we die, we will go to one of them together."

Such was the power of my words then, it was almost as if the goddess inside spoke through me. Tom was visibly moved. He nodded in what I believed was acceptance and returned to the wires.

A minute later the motor roared to life, and we were off.

The water was liquid glass. We plowed across the sea at high speed, neither of us breathing well, Tom worse off than me. His morphine was wearing off quickly, and halfway to Delos he asked me to take the wheel and sat down, balled up in pain. I was the one with the gun, the sure knowledge of what Helen could and would do. I wondered if I should put Tom through the strain of climbing Kythnos. It didn't seem logical. Yet I felt he should be with me.. ..

I don't know what I expected to happen on Kythnos to help Tom. Certainly lightning was not going to strike. The thunderbolts had left with Zeus, when he had gone off to God only knew which region. The best I could hope for was that we'd die in each other's arms—after we had stopped Helen.

How did I intend to stop her?

Was I prepared to kill her?

194

THE IMMORTAL

Yes.

I wanted to come upon Helen with as much stealth as possible. Although it added time, I circled around the north end of Delos, before bringing the boat to shore on the west side of Kythnos. I was almost certain Helen would have docked her boat on the east side of the pinnacle, since that would have brought her as close as possible to her objective. But with my choice of landing site, I had not added greatly to how far we had to walk—maybe two hundred yards at most.

We climbed out of the boat and started for Kythnos, picking our way through a few of the more obscure ruins of Delos. Surprisingly, I was not anxious to run into the island's security force. It could have been argued that we could use the police to stop Helen from harming Pascal. But my objective was to stop Helen permanently. No jail could hold her now that she was awakening to her true nature. Deep inside, her origin was demonic. She would cause the world untold suffering if she was left alive. I planned to put a bullet in her brain straightaway.

We reached the base of Kythnos less than ten minutes after leaving the boat. The pinnacle rose above us like a man-made silver cone. The island was silent as a tomb. The moon shone straight overhead like the Cyclop's eye burning a hole in the firmament. I remembered how hard it had been to climb the steps, but now we couldn't even use them, for Helen would see us approaching. We had to go up the west side of 195

CHRISTOPHER PIKE

the hill, through the weeds, clinging to stones and gravel. After I pointed this out to Tom, he groaned, and fell to his knees.

"I don't know if I can make it, Josie," he whispered.

I helped him up and almost passed out from my own pain. "Think how beautiful the view will be from the top. Think how surprised Helen will be to see us."

Tom tried to smile. "Can we offer her a hamburger?"

I hadn't told him I was going to kill her on sight.

"We will offer her dessert," I said.

We started up. Five minutes into the climb I thought it was hopeless. We were both too weak. The last of my strength was evaporating in the brilliant moonlight. The sun would have been hotter and would have sapped my energy quicker. Yet I wished it had been in the sky instead of the moon. For the sun was the home of Apollo, and we were so near his birthplace. I pictured him on his throne on Mt. Olympus, so silent, so powerful, so all knowing.

Yet, at my trial, he had let me be condemned.

Why? I still didn't understand.

But the mere thought of him gave me a boost of energy. I pulled on Tom. "We're almost there," I whispered.

In reality we had to stop to rest three more times before we reached the summit. Our last break was very near the top, maybe fifty feet short of our goal. We clung precariously to the side, sharp stones digging into our ribs.

Our journey had not been in vain.

196

THE IMMORTAL

Above us, I could hear Helen and Pascal talking.

But I couldn't hear what they were saying.

"What's the plan?" Tom whispered.

"I want you to stay here," I said. "I'll go up alone."

"But you dragged me up here so I could be with you when you confronted her."

"I brought you here for other reasons," I said simply. "You rest here for a moment." I removed the gun from my belt. "I'll call for you in a minute."

He grabbed my arm. "What are you going to do, Josie?"

I smiled. "Reason with her." I leaned over and gave him a quick kiss on his dusty cheek. "Don't worry, Tom, I won't be long."

He gave me a distrustful look but didn't argue.

I scrambled up the remainder of the hill to a large marble block that lay at the edge of the summit and that helped prevent tourists from falling off Kythnos. It was my initial intention to pause at the stone, maybe listen to Helen and Pascal for a moment to get a bearing on what was happening, before bolting onto the scene. As I listened, however, I heard nothing. I suspected Helen had noted our arrival. If that was the case, the situation would not improve with my waiting.

I jumped up onto the marble stone, my gun drawn.

Helen and Pascal stood near each other in the center of the ring of stones that made up the secondary mount of the summit. The stones were low, useless for cover. It seemed I had not taken them by complete surprise; they were scanning the four direo

197

CHRISTOPHER PIKE

tions when I appeared. Also, Helen did not freeze at my appearance. She saw the gun and quickly jumped behind Pascal.

"She has a gun," Helen said to Pascal. "She intends to shoot me."

Obviously the sacrifice to Alecto had not reached even the beginning stages. Pascal still seemed to be on good terms with Helen. But then I noticed a heaviness in the way he moved, as if he were slightly drugged. Of course, I knew as soon as I awoke from my final dream that Helen was capable of controlling him by the sheer force of her will. All demons, to varying extents, could dominate the will of an average human being. On Mt. Olympus, the practice was referred to as Seedling. Pascal was a nice guy, but no warrior. Tom, on the other hand, must have had tremendous internal strength. He had already resisted Helen's use of Seedling, as demonstrated by the fact that he had said no to her advances.